Valentine's day is THIS WEEKEND, and I still hadn't made my valentine for my wife. Luckily, I reserved today to do a Valentine's day craft with the kids, although I still hadn't fully decided on what to do by the time I fell asleep last night. Some improvisation would be in order.

I woke up kind of early this morning and cut out around 50 small hearts out of white paper. I was thinking of making them into swan feathers somehow (swans are an emblematic animal for love in our family), although I wasn't sure how when I started. By the time the kids got up, I had cut out all the hearts and was outlining them with a sharpie. As I got breakfast for the kids, we ran out of Orange Juice, and then it struck me that the juice container, if collapsed properly, could make an excellent swan body. The game was afoot.

After tracking down a used toilet paper roll and paper towel roll, some white duct tape, and a little glue, we had all the basic components we would need.

Our elf Lyric examines our base materials.

With a few cuts in the paper towel roll, we were able to create a neck, although after consulting a picture I realized it was bending in more of an ostrich style.

A few more cuts on the paper towel tube and some more duct tape got the neck looking better.

Then I started applying the heart feathers with the kids. I'd put on the glue and have them place the feathers after showing them how to do it. Lyric was the one who came up with the idea of making the tail feathers.

I should note here that the kids were not present for the whole creation of the swan... they went in and out of their room, playing with toys, as I worked on it. That's how it goes with projects like these, but I think that's fine. The important thing (at least in my mind) is modelling creativity for them. They might not be able to focus all the way through it yet, but if they can see you focusing, it gives them an idea of how things get done.

When I got home today, I added some orange tape on the beak and decorated the head with a sharpie. This is what I've got so far:

I might fancy it up a bit more in the coming days, but it's pretty sweet! And as Zephyr said "We made a swan for Valentine's Day out of things we were going to throw away!" A poet, I tells you.